Toronto, ON – Members of the Magkaisa Centre marched with over 2,000 people at the Occupy Toronto rally on October 15, 2011 as a show of solidarity and support with the Occupy Wall Street protesters in New York. Initiated in that city over a month ago, “Occupy” is now a growing global movement spanning across cities and countries, which speaks directly of the increasing awareness and dissatisfaction of peoples against corporate greed and the current financial crisis felt by billions worldwide.

Marching under slogans such as “We are the 99%” and chanting to expose the “rising gap between the rich and the poor,” progressive Filipino Canadians recognize this increasing stratification not only as chants but as harsh realities felt in the lives of the growing Filipino Canadian transnational community. With the Philippines now the largest source of immigrants in Toronto and the whole of Canada, Filipino Canadians are denied their genuine settlement and integration in Canadian society as they are relegated as sources of cheap and temporary labour through neoliberal labour programs such as the Live-in Caregiver Program and the Temporary Foreign Workers Program.

Moreover, the Conservative government’s massive cutbacks on settlement programs last year and more recently on social services, the privatization of essential public services, and their incessant drive towards the contractualization of labour are clear indications of the Conservative government’s concerted efforts to prevent immigrant, racialised and working class communities from genuinely settling, successfully integrating and fully participating in Canadian society. Such cutbacks are being implemented alongside financial policy initiatives geared towards bolstering corporate investment.

Canada, being an advanced capitalist country, is not immune to the worsening global crisis. In fact, it addresses it by fervently pushing for the rabid implementation of its neoliberal agenda. As Canada’s continuous economic growth immensely relies on immigration, its insistence on temporary migration and the cyclical importation of cheap and temporary labour from the Global South and exploitation of these workers in Canada is a clear response to this crisis and therefore cannot be ignored. As such, progressive Filipino Canadians urge all to realize and to critically understand these growing movements as symptomatic of the growing crisis of capitalism brought upon by the neoliberal agenda of globalization.

As capitalism’s crisis intensifies, progressive Filipino Canadians will continue to march in solidarity with the 99% with a strong resolve to break the cycle of temporary migration and will continue to endeavour in building the movement for the just and genuine settlement and integration of not only Filipino Canadians, but of all racialised and working class peoples who call Canada home.

Advance the struggles of the 99%!
Expose and oppose the neoliberal project!
Break the cyclical pattern of temporary migration!
Advance the movement towards genuine settlement and integration!

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For more information:
Ken Santos
(416) 519-2553
ukpc-on@magkaisacentre.org
www.magkaisacentre.org
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